California Equine Retirement Foundation Ranch

In the 1980s, Grace Belcuore loved to visit Southern California’s three major racetracks and play the ponies. Around that time, she was attracted to the exploits of one particular champion.

“Like 10 million other people, I fell in love with John Henry,” said Belcuore.

When the smallish, late-blooming thoroughbred racehorse of modest pedigree retired in 1984 with nearly $6.5 million in career earnings and two Eclipse Horse of the Year awards, a question nagged at Belcuore.

What’s next for this horse, which had given her – and many, many others – so many thrills? She was told not to worry about John Henry, that his needs would be comfortably met in retirement.

Belcuore was alarmed to learn John Henry was an exception.

“I learned that geldings are usually slaughtered,” she said.

That proved to be a call to action for Belcuore, a former teacher and school administrator, and she established the California Equine Retirement Foundation as a sanctuary ranch for retired thoroughbreds in 1986. Three years later, she moved to a 10-acre site off Keller Road in Winchester. And over the next quarter-century, CERF became a respected leader in the thoroughbred rescue industry.

Today, CERF is beset by a power struggle over control of the nonprofit. Belcuore, 86, said she has been ousted by her appointed successor, Carrie Ard, and now can’t even step foot on the CERF ranch.

Dueling lawsuits have been filed in the dispute, with one set to go to court in October.

Belcuore lives in a house next to the ranch and sees, but can’t touch, horses she has known and cared for over the last 10 to 15 years. It makes the situation especially difficult, she said.

“I feel like a mother whose children have been taken from her,” said Belcuore. “I look out the window and see my babies … but there’s nothing I can do.”

Ard declined an interview request. “We have no comment to make,” said Ard. “We are in the middle of litigation.”

Belcuore, who turns 87 in September, admits she has experienced health setbacks. Because of hearing issues, she started encountering problems keeping up with discussions at board meetings in recent years. She was hospitalized for four days in April 2013 for what she said was a high calcium level. And earlier this year, she suffered congestive heart failure.

Belcuore provided a letter dated April 6, on CERF stationery, announcing that directors had removed her from the board and rescinded her position as CEO.

“You spent many years building CERF to the place where it was, and we have no desire to see your legacy ruined or further destroyed by the actions that have been taking place recently,” stated the letter. Signed by the board secretary, it did not detail what actions prompted the removal.

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